This month, we go way Off-Broadway to the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., and their co-production with Toneelgroep Amsterdam of Wings of Desire, a play based upon the famous Wim Wenders film about an angel (Damiel) who seeks to become human so that he can spend his life with a beautiful trapeze artist (Marion). The show uses a lot of sound, from an audio montage of the inner thoughts of citizens to an occasionally noisy two-piece group (guitar, bass, vocals), to help recreate the world of the epic film, and trapeze artist Mam Smith elegantly performs with silks to poetic effect. ART's resident sound designer, David Remedios, a music major in college who has spent 13 years at the ART, acted as sound supervisor for this show, traveling to Amsterdam to see how the original Dutch production was done before it came to Boston. He recently designed The Island of Slaves for the ART, preceded by Orpheus X at the company's Arrow Street space, both directed by their artistic director, Robert Woodruff. He often techs two shows at once, and even does outside work when time allows. Recent credits include The Scottish Play (La Jolla Playhouse), Leap (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park), Dressed Up! Wigged Out! (original music and sound, Boston Playwrights Theatre) and productions for Emerson Stage, Boston Theatre Works and Vineyard Playhouse.
FOH: Was ART's version of the show pretty much the same as the one in Amsterdam, or were changes made?
David Remedios: No, there were changes. Specifically there was some recasting done, and then the biggest structural change was the ending. The biggest recasting that happened was Bernie White, who plays Damiel in the ART production, played Cassiel in Amsterdam, and a Dutch actor played Damiel there. But it was always known that they were going to switch roles. Then they cast Mark Rosenthal as Cassiel locally. In Amsterdam, Marion came out at the end of the pop concert reprise and sat at a table with Damiel, and basically did the final speech just sitting there at a cafe table, and it ended, whereas director Ola Mafaalani re-explored it here. Bernie was game to get on the silks, so they came up with this ending that is quite beautiful in the way it shows the consummation of the relationship. Damiel and Marion perform a pas de deux on the trapeze silk. I feel it has more closure here than it did in Amsterdam.
The sound design didn't change all that much. Andy Moor, the sound designer and composer for the project, had all the ideas basically tracked through. There were some changes for the local stuff — Robin Young plays the news reader (Noraly Beyer was the Dutch news reader in Holland), and the old people's inner thoughts that were originally in Dutch were re-recorded in English. Essentially, everything he did with the playback and the music was the same and just adapted to fit the structure of the piece as it developed here.
The show opens with an audio montage of voices.
They started with the recorded whispers as pre-show, and then the music starts, and you hear the public thoughts, which are the two musicians, Hadewych and Jesse, speaking offstage with these kind of non-linear thoughts. All of that was pretty much the same. Texturally, I think they were trying to capture the feeling of the angels floating over Berlin in the movie and observing the inner workings of the people in the city. The opening montage was also supposed to bring the theatre audience into the world of the piece.
So one of your roles at the ART is sound supervisor?
That's one of my roles, but I'm the resident sound designer as well. My involvement with this project was one that, because this was an international co-production being developed over in Holland, we felt it important enough to have representatives from our staff go over to observe the process. I went over basically to observe how the tech came together and how Ola worked in tech so that I knew the organic context of why decisions were made, and I was there when they were made. It was really great because I could be inside the production and not be surprised when it came over. I was there as an observer. I wasn't really hands-on at all.
They do a weird thing there where they actually tech their show in a different theatre space and then truck it up to their home space in Amsterdam. Then they have a couple more days of tech, premiere it, and in this case it ran for two weeks in Amsterdam before touring regionally in the Netherlands. That's normal for them and apparently how they get their government subsidies. All their theatre groups tour their productions all over the country, and into Belgium sometimes. Most of the technicians that were involved — Peter Zwart, the audio supervisor for Toneelgroep, and Pieter Roodbeen, the production engineer — were spearheading how the sound system came together, and then I was able to consult with them to make sure that we were going to be able to reproduce what they had over here. Because my role was mostly dealing with the system, and not so much the operation, Pieter Roodbeen came over here for a few days of the tech week to basically assist my engineer in grasping what needed to be done.
The big difference in the way the show was run between here and there is that they were using a digital board to basically build a show with. I opted for an analog because I don't have much experience with digital boards, and when I observed the process over there, knowing how little time we would have in tech here as opposed to how much time they would have, I just felt that it was going to be a little hard to transfer the information. The script was a very modular being in Amsterdam, and Ola and translator Gideon Lester tried different iterations of the script, different scene orders every day, but we had tech sessions in the afternoons. The place was in a suburb of Rotterdam, an hour or so south of Amsterdam, so we would shuttle bus down there every day and have five or six hours of tech. Then we'd all shuttle back up to Amsterdam while the technicians stayed down there and worked on notes for the next day. That's not a luxury we really have here. They went with the digital board a few years ago to facilitate setting up their touring system so that they would have less lines to run, but I saw a potential hurdle in trying to reprogram a digital board with the knowledge that things would change here in a limited amount of time, so I opted for the analog mixer.
Which board are you using in the Loeb Drama Center at the ART?
Our house board is an Allen & Heath GL4000.
How many inputs are you running for the show?
There are three CD players, so six channels of playback. There's an SPX990 for reverb. There are four wireless mics for actors and two for instruments, the guitar and bass, plus two wireless vocals for the musicians, and then there are PCC 160s on the apron to function as foldback to the stage fills for people to hear the dialogue. I think that's about it. The board, in terms of inputs, was a little overkill for the show, but that's what we have in house. It was interesting because, when I build a show, I normally use Stage Research's SFX for playback.
Having worked with European directors in the past at ART, I know that they have very strong feelings about the sound engineer essentially being another actor in the show. The ideal is for the engineer to be very well versed in the show and to basically not only take their own cues — which is standard protocol there because the stage manager really doesn't exist there; there's no central hub that's responsible for all the cueing — but ideally have the engineer in rehearsal everyday. It may or may not be unusual for us. Usually, as a sound designer, I'm in rehearsals for shows, but then I turn it over to the engineer at tech in terms of operating, but over there they tend to have their production engineers in rehearsal. But the system with theatre is so different there, and the way that Toneelgroep works is that they have separate technical staffs for each production that they're producing at any given time. So if they have a production in rehearsal, a production on the road and a production in their home theatre, there are dedicated staffs for each of those shows, as opposed to us, who just have our staff and run around doing double duty. So the option to have the actual production engineer in rehearsal was a luxury that we can't really entertain here.
Having said that, the engineer who's mixing the show here is someone I hired from the outside, so she was able to be in the week of pickup rehearsals before tech to get a sense of what the show was going to be about. We used the wireless in rehearsal and had what playback we had before Andy got to town to try to make sense of what the show was going to become, based upon what it was in Amsterdam.
Who is your live engineer for the show?
Her name is Moira Shea, and she comes to us from a very strong background. She has 25 years of experience mixing live music and is an associate of my staff engineer, Darby Smotherman, and that's how I found out about her. Darby is not mixing Wings because she's currently mixing The Onion Cellar.
How did working on Wings of Desire compare to other recent ART shows?
I think the challenge in this was establishing the lines of communication between the two theatre groups. In that sense, it also helped that I, the production stage manager, one of our lighting people and our technical director went over at different times because the hierarchy and infrastructure are so different. At first, we were unclear as to what their concept of, say, a production manager was and what that person's duties were. When I got there to discuss them sending their engineer over with a couple of the other technicians, I found out whom to speak to. The most challenging thing was learning the way each other worked and clarifying that. Doing it via e-mail is never clear, so actually having the face-to-face was a good thing.
When I came back to Cambridge after two weeks in Amsterdam, I felt very comfortable with my knowledge of the show and what I could convey to the other production departments, although my focus was audio. The Dutch were very gracious hosts, so I felt that there was a rapport that had been established by having some sort of representation alongside them as they were developing this. I think it was a challenge for them, too; for example, engineering scenic elements, like the sand tubes and the snack shack. For the audio people it was a challenge, and Peter, the sound supervisor there, was very instrumental in guiding the technology that was used. Why the band ended up on wireless was because Peter decided that there was too much cable on stage. That opened up what the musicians were able to do in the context of the piece, so they were no longer confined to their down left position. They were actually able to interact more in the scenes. So in that sense it was design by committee — that's not really the right term to use — but the technicians were very instrumental in that regard to shaping the piece.
What kind of speaker system are you using at the ART?
In the Loeb it's primarily EAW cabinets. My LCR is EAW JFX-200s — an array of two for the center and then left/right. And in addition, for further coverage to the back of the hall, we have the very old EAW FR 253s. My subwoofers are EAW BH-500s. Then I have delay lines associated with the array on our three lighting beams. I have JF80s up there, and that's all addressed by a set of three dbx Driverack 480s, where I can set the delay times and do the EQ-ing for the zones.
So you're learning something with every show you do at the ART?
Yes, and I think the challenge for me with theatre, especially because the budgets for non-profit theatre are not particularly huge, is you really have to be creative and to work with an economy of means. Sometimes the stuff I'm most proud of can be done with a very limited speaker plot, depending on the space. Actually, what we have at the Loeb or at Arrow Street is a very modest sound system, but I'm able to get the most out of our inventory.
